“I was neck deep in water, so I was already freaking out,” the actress told Jimmy Fallon, who applauded her professionalism.

Sometimes, making TV gets a little too real, especially when rodents are involved.

Madelyn Cline, from Netflix’s teen adventure series Outer Banks, shared on The Tonight Show how production wanted her to have a too-close-for-comfort encounter with a “food motivated” vermin, which left her feeling a little skeeved out.

Madelyn Cline on ‘The Tonight Show,’ telling a story about a rat.Todd Owyoung/NBC; Getty

“The last time they put me in a small, tight space, they had to medicate me,” Cline explained. “So I read [the script] and I was like, “Not only are we in another tight place, but there’s rats?’ They were like, ‘Don’t worry, they’re trained!’ Which just means food-motivated. But I went up to the cages and it said, ‘Don’t feed the rats!’ Wait, so they’re hungry? Am I the food?”

In fact, that didn’t end up being the problem.

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision made by Outer Banks co-creator Jonas Pate during filming that really freaked out Cline, although she made sure to praise Pate (“Jonas, I love you”) and the whole production team: “The set was amazing, but it wasn’t my favorite.”

“At one point, Jonas was like to our rat wrangler, ‘Drop it on her head!'” Cline said. “I was neck deep in water, so I was already freaking out. I looked like an island to the rat who’s trying to save itself from drowning, as am I. The rat crawls up and it gets in my hair. I was screaming bloody murder!”

“No, no, no,” responded host Jimmy Fallon. “I don’t know how you did that. That’s what I’m talking about. That is a pro right there, ladies and gentlemen.”

Madelyn Cline in ‘Outer Banks’ season 4.Netflix

In addition to her work on Outer Banks, Cline is also known for her performance in Glass Onion as Whiskey, a young streamer who gets caught up in a murder mystery involving the old friends of her boyfriend (Dave Bautista). Working with that star-studded cast helped teach Cline about how to navigate a stressful set.

“The biggest, most helpful lesson is with the absolute freedom with which they worked and how they were on set,” Cline told Entertainment Weekly last year. “There wasn’t so much pressure that they put on themselves, they just allowed themselves to be in the moment and be free and try things and maybe fail and we’ll try it again, we’ll do another take.”

Outer Banks season 4 part 1 is streaming now on Netflix, with part 2 set to follow on Nov. 7. For now, watch Cline’s The Tonight Show appearance above.